He even used to repeat these often blunt or pointless witticisms, and for instance, with no reason at all, went on saying for several days,
“Well, that’s a far away business,” simply because his son, on hearing that he was going to the early church service, had used that expression.
“Thank God, he has got over his melancholy,” he whispered to his wife. “How he went for me today, it was marvelous!”
Besides, the idea of having such an assistant filled him with enthusiasm and pride.
“Yes, yes,” he said to a peasant woman wearing a man’s cloak and a horn-shaped hood, as he handed her a bottle of Goulard’s extract or a pot of white ointment, “you, my dear, ought to be thanking God every minute that my son is staying with me; you will be treated now by the most up-to-date scientific methods; do you know what that means?
The Emperor of the French, Napoleon, even he has no better doctor.”
But the peasant woman, who had come to complain that she felt queer all over (though she was unable to explain what she meant by these words), only bowed low and fumbled in her bosom where she had four eggs tied up in the corner of a towel.
Once Bazarov pulled out a tooth for a traveling pedlar of cloth, and although this tooth was quite an ordinary specimen, Vassily Ivanovich preserved it like some rare object and incessantly repeated, as he showed it to Father Alexei,
“Only look, what roots!
The strength Evgeny has!
That pedlar was just lifted up in the air . . . even if it had been an oak, he would have rooted it up!”
“Admirable!” Father Alexei would comment at last, not knowing what to answer or how to get rid of the ecstatic old man.
One day a peasant from a neighboring village brought over to Vassily Ivanovich his brother, who was stricken with typhus.
The unhappy man, lying flat on a truss of straw, was dying; his body was covered with dark patches, he had long ago lost consciousness.
Vassily Ivanovich expressed his regret that no one had taken any steps to secure medical aid earlier and said it was impossible to save the man.
In fact the peasant never got his brother home again; he died as he was, lying in the cart.
Three days later Bazarov came into his father’s room and asked him if he had any silver nitrate.
“Yes; what do you want it for?”
“I want it . . . to burn out a cut.”
“For whom?”
“For myself.”
“How for yourself?
What is that?
What sort of a cut?
Where is it?”
“Here, on my finger.
I went today to the village where they brought that peasant with typhus, you know.
They wanted to open the body for some reason, and I’ve had no practice at that sort of thing for a long time.”
“Well?”
“Well, so I asked the district doctor to help; and so I cut myself.”
Vassily Ivanovich suddenly turned completely white, and without saying a word rushed into his study and returned at once with a piece of silver nitrate in his hand.
Bazarov was about to take it and go away.
“For God’s sake,” muttered Vassily Ivanovich, “let me do it myself.”
Bazarov smiled.
“What a devoted practitioner you are!”
“Don’t laugh, please.
Show me your finger.
It’s a small cut.
Am I hurting you?”
“Press harder; don’t be afraid.”
Vassily Ivanovich stopped.
“What do you think, Evgeny; wouldn’t it be better to burn it with a hot iron?”
“That ought to have been done sooner, now really even the silver nitrate is useless.
If I’ve caught the infection, it’s too late now.”
“How . . . too late . . .?” murmured Vassily Ivanovich almost inaudibly.
“I should think so! It’s over four hours ago.”
Vassily Ivanovich burned the cut a little more.
“But hadn’t the district doctor got any caustic?”
“No.”
“How can that be, good heavens!